IMPEACHMENT: PUBLISHER

IMPEACHMENT: PUBLISHER; Hustler Behind Sex Story

By BERNARD WEINRAUB

Published: December 19, 1998

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 18—
It was, in some ways, perhaps inevitable that the publisher of Hustler magazine, Larry Flynt, would immerse himself in the infidelities of President Clinton and other Washington politicians.

Raunchy, flamboyant, self-serving and defiant, Mr. Flynt was fully enjoying his notoriety today just as he did more than 25 years ago when he leveraged a string of Ohio strip clubs into the start of a publishing empire that pushed, and is still pushing, the limits of sexual tolerance.

Mr. Flynt is taking credit for the disclosure by Speaker-elect Robert L. Livington that he had carried on adulterous affairs in his past. Apparently the disclosure was made after Mr. Livingston learned that Hustler was set to publish an article that says the Republican lawmaker had affairs with at least four women.

''Frankly, we were getting ready to go with this story and are disappointed he scooped us,'' Mr. Flynt said in a statement this morning. He has said he will publish the article in January.

Mr. Flynt said he was politically partisan but did not say which party he favored. He is a Democrat.

Two months ago, Mr. Flynt paid $85,000 for a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post offering up to $1 million to any woman who could prove that she had had a sexual relationship with a member of Congress or a high-level Government official. The advertisement was vintage Flynt. More than 20 years ago he placed a similar ad in The Post after two Congressmen, Representative Wayne Hayes, Democrat of Ohio, and Wilbur Mills, Democrat of Arkansas, were caught in sex scandals.

Although Mr. Flynt has been fond of saying, ''All I wanted to do was make some money and have some fun,'' his aspirations and obsessions have seemed deeper than that.

Mr. Flynt has raged against what he views as sexual hypocrisy and became an improbable champion of the First Amendment when the Supreme Court in 1988 overturned a jury's $200,000 award to the Rev. Jerry Falwell for ''emotional distress'' over a Hustler magazine parody that portrayed him as an incestuous drunk. The 8-to-0 ruling broadly reaffirmed and extended the court's decisions protecting criticism of public figures as free speech, even if the criticism was ''outrageous'' and offensive.